Transcripts For CSPAN3 Stonewall Riots 50th Anniversary 20240714

Were looking back on 50 years, where we were 50 years ago at the stone wall riots and how far weve come. The change that is have been made and the changes still to come too. Before we get started i would like to introduce our panel. David cart ter author of stone wall the riots that sparked the revolution. The basis for american experience, the film stonewall uprises. How many years on the force . 26 years. Journalist, novelist, screen writer as well and a columnist for salon. So thank you all for taking part in this today. Im looking forward to learning a lot and looking back with you through your eyes and perspectives on where we were 50 years ago. Its kind of hard to believe. David i would like to start ith you if we can. What was new york like, what was america like for gay, lesbian, transgender citizens before the stonewall riots . Wlaffs it like for the Lgbt Community . Well, its really counter intuitive. Because theres a common tendency at least in this country to assume that the further we go back in history generally the worst things are going to be. But actually in the whole history of in the entirety of u. S. History the 60s and 50s were probably the very worst time for lgbt people. Thats because there had been a period of liberalization in the 1920s. With we know a generally liberal period. But with the Great Depression coming along, that seemed to gin a clampdown im going to use the term gay people. En after the war, we entered what would be called the red scare. And i think this was the main reason that there was so much repression after world war ii. So for example in new york city the height of arrest of gay men actually occurred in 1966 where t that time you had on average 100 homosexual men being arrested in new york city every week. So while the 1960s were a period of we think of the time of expanding liberty, openness, it was really opposite for our people. And the another big force making that happen was the use of psychiatry. Signature monday froid his view of signature mundfroid, his iew was not very negative. He certainly didnt think it with was a severe pathology. America was the first country to really embrace froid and en the froid yan approach to psychology was embraced by this country american psychologists, under the influence of the litary in world war ii, they the american psychiatrist whose tended to path oljies homosexuality severely. So there were laws you could be put in a mental institution, that could be imposed upon you. There, people had men were cast rated, lob ot mies, shock therapy. And other kinds of treatments that were meant to change them from being homosexual to heterosexual or made them just asexual. The laws kept multiplying altogether. From one state from one institution to another. So the way that our number one historian of homosexuality from a legal point of view the way he characterized it was that by the 1950s and 1960s gay people really lived in a state of suffication. It with was a terrible time. I want to go back to the day of the raids and the riots. You were actually at stonewall inn. Take us back to what it was like to be there. It was accidentle for me. I had just graduated from west point, believe it or not, and i was spending my free going into the army leave going in new york walking from the loft i two to two doors down. I turned the corner on to christopher street and there it was in front of me. They were busting the stonewall, a couple of police ars pulled up on the street. It had begun probably half an hour before. They were starting to bring out people in cuffs and put them in the police cars. A crowd had gathered across the street and they were watching. Some of the people across the street had gotten out of the stonewall as the cops came in, either out the back door or around the cops and out the front door or somehow. And then the word spread what was going on, on christopher street. And christopher street was the heart and soul of the Gay Community in new york. There were a lot of gay bars and places that gay people had dinner and so forth right nearby. They started people started walking over to see what was going on. The what happened was cops busted gay bars all the time. But what typically happened was gay people would come out of the bars with cuffs on, cover their faces and go into the patty wagons. They didnt want to be recognized. People had jobs. They worked for banks or advertising firms or whatever and they thought they would lose their jobs or would be exposed to their wives if they were married or whatever. Thats what the police were used to. Well, they bust it had stonewall and the stonewall is known for serving underaged people and it had a sound system in the back room and there was dancing and it was kind of a wild place. The people that they busted at stonewall werent like that. They didnt have jobs, they didnt have anything to lose. A lot of them were 17, 18 years old. When they came out of the bar, they were posing and waving with their friends and calling out and saying, yeah know, come down can you get my bail . And acting like it with was there was nothing to it. They had been busted before, it didnt bother them. And the cops didnt like it. They didnt have that fear that so many had before. No. And they didnt behave like frightened gay people and the cops didnt like it and the cops didnt like them standing and posing and waving. So the crowd started the cops started pushing them with their night sticks and shoving them roughly into cars and the crowds started reacting to it and yelling at the cops and throwing pennies at first and calling them pigs. And it sort of went south from there right after i got there is when all the throwing and so forth. This went on through the night. Was it the next night where you had hundreds if not thousands come back . The next night was the night that the Tactical Patrol force was sent in. There were hundreds if not a couple thousand. It went on for on fri night it didnt go on for real long because the bust took place, they tried to get them in the cars. When the gay people got angry and started throwing stuff at the cops, the cops retreated, went inside the stonewall. I was outside. That was when they brought the front window threw things through the window, started a parking meter and used it to ram the door. That sort of thing. And then the cops, reinforcements came from the sixth precinct and scattered the crowd and the cops came back out. Within a couple of hours it was over. But saturday night went on for hours. I want to ask you because its been in the news last week your commissioner issued an apology on behalf of nypd for the raids. Tell us, give us a little bit of insight into that apology and goal. What was the response from goal . Ow do you view that apology . I take the apology kind of for what it is. An apology. I dont read much behind it for a number of Different Reasons but mainly because it was a moment that nobody thought would ever happen. I think if you know anything about commissioner oneal who i know quite well hes probably the first maybe humanitarian Police Commissioner weve had in new york city. Hes not this mold of this rock star kind of Police Commissioner. You know, we had randy kelly twice once for a couple years and then 12 years. Thats an eternity for a new york city Police Commissioner. We had these are big giant media personalities, media darlings. And commissioner oneal kind of just calmed it as he sees it. He was a cop his whole career and i think hes the only Police Commissioner in the last 50 years that is capable of bringing himself to apologize r acknowledge our role and our i guess travepbsgregses or our messups. He also issued an apology to the Prospect Park rape victims a couple months ago, and that also included roughly two paragraphs directed toward the lgbt q community. Im not here tonight really as his ambassador but what i will my s that he does lean on organization heavily for advice. E keeps me on his my role in the Police Department. He also has the former president as his lgbt liaison. Hes engaging and hes interested and he wants to know the way forward. He wants to know how the Community Feels. I wish sometimes that our community would be a little more engaging. I think that i wont get into the specifics of the meetings here on their staff and not as the president of goal. But i think sometimes other communities it seems are more kind of go in and speak and speak clearly. Theyre a little more organized. I dont know why it just seems we can never come to an agreement on anything, and thats troubling sometimes. Lets talk about our community, greater washington, if we can, for a minute. I want to ask, we just came off a parade that nbc was very involved in and a festival the next day, hundreds of thousands of people turned out. Youre a neative washingtonen. You have seen the demographics certainly change here and youve seen i guess acceptance change certainly over the decades. Talk a little bit about your role and your liaison and what you do. Thanks, jim. I think the first thing Everybody Knows probably thats been around for a while is washington, d. C. Is not any different than new york city other than new york city is massive and has a lott more people. But new york city in june of 1969 was the same as washington, d. C. As far as values, as far as common practices in Law Enforcement. We had a more or Less Division back then in the metropolitan Police Department. We were cracking down on gay bars and gay people and arresting people for the same types of offenses that you talk about, hundreds of men being arrested every day back then. So our hands are not clean here in washington, d. C. And while it was james oneal in new york city with who may have apologized on behalf of nypd when he did that i think he was also apologizing as a leader in Law Enforcement because nypd is a leader around the world. To say on behalf of all Law Enforcement that is not the way it should have been handled. That is not the way people should be treated ever, whether it was in a time when that was acceptable or not. So here in washington, d. C. , despite whatever the National Politics are, it doesnt matter who is in office weve always been a very liberal and open welcoming city for people to live and work in. We have had a human rights activist since 19 77 which has included Sexual Orientation. We have had openly lgbt members of our city council and our and we have one of the most progressive groups in our gay and wlezz ban activist alliance and other organizations. Going back as far as the 1970s, those groups immediately after stonewall started to work not just here in washington, d. C. But nationally to try and change things. And washington, d. C. Became a bit of a laboratory for many of the things that have spread throughout the United States and the world. One of those that were pretty proud of is the emergence of our liaison unit. Then we proudly changed the name to become the lgbt liaison unit just several years ago to be more inclusive. What with we did back then in just 1998, 1999, was re recognized that while geographic policing and Community Policing works all over the world, and sir robert peel when he created it back in london the idea of places Police Officers in geographic areas was a great idea for management and accountability. That sometimes you need to police and manage differently. Thats what we do. We look at communities dem grambingly. We have an lgbt liaison unit. Ergeant brown heads that here. One of our officers is working in the Jewish Community. We are in the asian, latino, deaf and hard of hearing community. Not that we are arent doing the same work but were focusing our attention on specific communities that have a shared concern, shared traits, whether it be communication, whether it be a history of abuse like the lgbt q plus community. And were trying to work to build relationships. So not if but when a crisis occurs like happened on saturday at our pride parade we have relationships and people know that they can count upon us and they recognize us and hopefully were able to gain cooperation and calm peoples fears. I want to ask you both. We talk about acceptance of residents and the people you work with with and serve. What about people on the force who are openly gay now who couldnt be years ago. How important is that and how are they when did it start that they were welcomed and embraced . How long ago has that been . I dont know. Im waiting for it. You made a face, right . I dont play poker. You know where you stand with me. I think that the trajectory of queer people in society and then in Law Enforcement of the criminal Justice System is kind of the same. I dont think that at all under any circumstances i would ever say that lgbt q people are at home yet in this nation. And because we have shows on tv with gay carktrers and things like that, its not the measure of at home for me. I would say that first of all lets look at goal, if we had time. The organization stems from charlie cock ran outed himself in front of the new York City City Council in november of 1981. So you had a gay rights bill that was before the city council. Now, your ordinance or your law gay in 77, that included people. Sexual orientation. And gender identity. Gender identity and expression was added later. I have my experts making sure im giving you the right information. So youre ahead of us. So in 81, theres this contentious hearing in the city Council Chamber. And i think it with was the Vice President or the president that issued this strong worded editorial in the newspaper that this law can never pass. We would need a carveout like they had in other institutions. We cant have queer cops. There are no such thing as gay cops. So now you have this viral testimony and so now who is going to testify next but a new York City Police sergeant . So the activists and everybody in this Council Chamber are like irate now. Theyre booing when she introduced. He steps in front of this microphone and he says not only am i proud to be a new York City Police officer but im proud to be a gay man. And from people that i know that were in the Council Chamber that day, it has never been louder than it with was at that moment in 1981. So we fast forward a few months and the organization was founded the first meeting took place in the basement of st. Josephs church in greenwich village. A Catholic Church that was very friendly to the community. They met in the basement and they met under protection of other cops because nobody wanted this meeting to happen. There were bomb threats i think called in to charlies home, his answering machine. And even going further than that first meeting there was always a threat to the meetings. These guys met in secrecy very often. 15 ith we go now for almost years i think or 14 years. Tomy wsuit was filed by ans, edgarred grezz, and fran. They were the plaintiffs and they were represented by two attorneys one of which was colleen, who would be the executive director of goal. This is 96 and it was settled in 97. So for 15 years they wanted absolutely nothing to do with us. Since then, every Single Initiative in new York City Police department has had for lgbt q people was either geared by goal individually or geared by goal as members of the Police Department kind of jointly. So we march for the first time in uniform in 19 97. For the gay 2002 officers Action League tosh fully accepted were more than an nypd organization. We represent all fulltime criminal justice employees and the interest of the community from inside those institutions. State police, federal, local. But it took the nypds committee of Police Societies until 2002 before the president of goal was able to sit in on meetings with other president s of their recognized fraternal, religious organizations. So were not really talking about ancient history here. The discrimination that we used to see and used to get reported to goal would be things like your locker would be turned upside down, personal property was destroyed, you know, hate speech was used. Now, i see a little bit different discrimination incidents or with what gets reported to me. I find that oftentimes our mbers have less desireable assignments inside of commands wlrks it be at the precinct level the transit level. If you work a steady sector, a lot of times you have a partner so lets say brett was my partner. I work with brett every day. I find that a lot of times our people, especially male officers, and we can have a conversation about the difference between being a lesbian Police Officer and being a gay Police Officer, a gay man, we could talk about that later. But we see that these guys dont have steady partners. Theyre in what we call response autos or theyre assigned to sit on prisoners or go to the hospital. As opposed to having a traditional patrol assignment. When theres a detail opened up in the precinct lets say youre a good cop, youre a hard worker. You come in, you do your job. You have good evaluations. And so if theres a temporary opening that because somebodys out longterm sick or that somebody cant come to work because theyre on some other kind of leave or vacation or whatever the case may be and theres something going on that they need somebody for theyll pull the good queer cop. Hes good enough then. But when the position is open and that detail full time, is is that the guy that gets the spot . No. So thats the discrimination that we see today. And mind you, the relationship with the executive staff, executives have never been better. I talked about the commissioner a few minutes ago. I cant ask for a better Law Enforcement executive to work for and the chiefs of counter terrorism, the Detective Bureau, the chief of department, patrol, all on board. Its the systems and structure of the human barriers below. So i dont think were 100 at home on the force. I dont think were 100 at home in this country. I think we have a lot of work to do in both places. You mentioned cock ran. Im curious, roughly, and ill ask for metropolitan police, too. Numberswise how many openly gay officers are on your force and your department, too . You just opened up a can of worms. I said roughly. Internalized homophobia is still a very real thing for cops. I think that everybody wants to be part of a team. Everyone wants to be part of a winning team. At what expense do you become part of that team . The nypd does not even track Sexual Orientation or anything like that. For the First Time Ever and at my urgence, they are trying to do focus groups and things like that to gauge the way queer people feel inside of the department. I would go to meetings all the time you would get this data and we find a large number of africanamerican cops leave at 20 years. And we start analyzing data and we say why is that . Maybe they feel this is not a home for them. We dont even know. Our membership varies as far as a couplenypd, we get more 150 fulltime, nonretired active members per year. That is an incredibly low number for a 54,000 person agency. 36,000 sworn in the other pavilion, so we think that it is because people dont want to make other people uncomfortable. Give me five minutes with any cop and i can pull it out of them. Any gay cop. If he is a detective. That is right. [laughter] its because they think they are doing something good for whatever. For the job because the conversations, you have a conversation in the locker room or in the break room, whatever the case may be, and the experience is kind of like this. We are constantly disclosing our Sexual Orientation everywhere we go. Whether you realize it or not, you are. If i were to say that i was going to go to the movies this weekend with my boyfriend, lets just add on boyfriend or whatever the case may be, and there, it is like almost like the air gets sucked out of the room. Its like ok, we get it, its he is gay. If you make another reference, it is like, why is he talking about it always . Youre just not used to hearing it. So there are a lot of loaded issues with that. So we have no idea, to be honest. Jim so that is still taking place . Everybody wants to be part of the big blue family. Jim when you look at Corporate America versus Police Culture it is very different. Were talking about new york city. It is. Law enforcement is a conservative profession. It is still uber masculine in nature. And it is slow to change. So, it is very different from Corporate America in many ways. In washington, d. C. , maybe 50 people that i could say are openly gay and that is in a rolodex way back here that would never be written down or disclose to anybody because as brian said, here i am front page of Washington Post as out as they come. There are still situations in the job i am in where people dont know that i am gay, they dont ask and when it comes up as a matter conversation that i have a life partner or something that discloses my Sexual Orientation, there is a look of shock. And, straight people dont have to deal with that. There is another reason though brian didnt touch upon in d. C. , whether it exists in new york city or other large cities for the most , gay cops dont feel the need to go to liaison unit for support because it is it really it is a really comfortable place to work and live and to be gay. For many of them, while they are not out, they are comfortable in who they are and they consider themselves out. The definition of who and what is out so they feel protected. Absolutely. So theres a balance going on. A little bit. The thing that most concerns me that i have been dealing with, i was elected president , started january 2016 and what i find now, what concerns me the most is everybody here knows that new york is known for affordable real estate, right . [laughter] were big on that. A lot of affordable housing. We see a trajectory of People Living at home longer than they have. I could be wrong about this. At any point in history in the city. People are at home until they are 35 or 36 years old. What i have a lot of now is a lot of, especially male cops that are being terrorized by their families, by their parents , and we have these counseling sessions in my apartment. I know when the phone rings and it is a certain person on a holiday. Know wheny wante to i will be back from my sisters or if im visiting with my brother, are you going to be around . Im going to stop by. They just have to get out of the toxicity. This is a job with a lot of responsibility, a lot of power and a lot of stress. I really worry about some of these guys and i had a really bad scare last summer where somebody posted something on facebook and it was off to the races. Mobilization, we had cops at the parents house, cops here with you for this cop, who luckily we were able to find him and get to him and get him to help that he needed. One a look back with stonewall and 50 years ago, david, you interviewed a deputy. Talk about his perspective when you talked to him about the raids and the riots. David well, thats a big subject. Although i covered it in my book, this aspect has not gotten history ore common common perception of history. So, seymour pine was a Police Officer who had a strong reputation for being honest. I think what was happening was that because of the Nap Commission and other things happen in the late 1960s, the Police Department was under a great deal of scrutiny at that time for corruption and other problems. I think that is probably why he was moved, against his wishes , from brooklyn to manhattan and in charge of the morals police. I think he probably he is not sure when the transfer took place. Probably april or may. Anyhow, the spring of that year. Very soon after that, he was called into a meeting with his superior officer. I will go into the detail here because it is not part of commonly known history. His commanding officer, a captain, tells him that the new york Police Department had an inquiry from interpol that there were a lot of bombs on the streets and they wanted the nypd to investigate. They investigated and found the bombs were not counterfeit but stolen. So, they investigated further. They found out the bombs had bonds had been stolen from wall street by a gay man who was under pressure of blackmail. One of the main figures was a career criminal by the name of ed murphy. He was gay and had ran a national blackmail ring. He was busted in the mid60s. It was for blackmailing all these thousands of people, including prominent people like the head of the ama, and admiral in the navy caught up in this and committed suicide. He was held in jail but then let out. Million,ne of about 2 which is probably like 20 million to 40 million today. I think he had the goods on hoover. That is why he did not end up in prison the rest of his life. Seriously. J. Edgar hoover was blackmailed by ed murphy. Ed murphy did use the stonewall. The mafia honors had an apartment on the second floor. They ran a prostitution ring and used the waiters who were mostly straight to gather information from the patrons of the stonewall club. So, when the police investigated, it seemed the blackmail ring was centered around stonewall. Pine was ordered to shut it down. What happened is only pine and his copartner, this was supposed to be a secret, so only they knew about that part of the raid. Even their men and women from the morals squad did not know iding to bust a blackmail ring. So, that was the reason for the raid. That is fascinating. The different layers behind it. But they did the same thing that they always did. They arrested the kids that were in there and they were busting a blackmail ring or they were blackmailing wall street guys. Threatening them, taking their pictures, and saying we will show them to your wife or your boss or whatever. So they went in with an actual motive. It may have been the only gay bar bust in history with a good motive. [laughter] all the rest of them were just because it was gay people in the bar or because the mob wasnt paying off. One of the things we are not discussing here, all the problems you got in the Police Department with attitudes about gay people, all the problems in new york city or washington, d. C. , come out of long ingrained tendencies of families and so forth to look down on gay people and think that they are the other. And then to pass laws about it. With respect to gay bars, the laws they passed were that gay people cannot own a bar because they could not get a Liquor License because there was a moral clause in new york city and probably washington, d. C. , so the mob took it over. The mob opened these places without Liquor Licenses, and paid off the cops. So, you have an underground economy of bars serving gay people. They are overcharging them, gouging them. Then you have the cops coming in and busting it because the mob is not paying off on time or right or lets just shake up some gay people. All of that comes out of the laws that were passed by the public. By the voters that voted in the politicians that passed the laws. Then, you have the police force that treats groups differently than white generally cops as the other. If you are black, brown, or especially if you are gay. So, by the time you get that and mix it all together, then you get what has become known as the stonewall riots. The rights mostly that they are talking about is saturday night with tps coming in with face shields and all that stuff. That was typically, just like in 1968 in the Democratic National convention, it was a police riot. Gay people were on the street. They might have been blocking the street but you can move people along on the street. But you dont move people along on the street and expect them to cooperate when you put your face shield down and go after them with a nightstick and start prodding them. Jim how long did it take time how long did it take, i am curious, until the approach by police toward gay bars changed . Did it take a matter of a few years . Lucian there are a couple things going on there. The change in the new york city laws, but also a change in the new york citys and new york the way theyn regulated bars through Liquor License. They finally gave a Liquor License to the first gay bar that was owned by gay people in about 1973. As it happens, i stumbled into the stonewall riot on june 27, 1969 and i was working at the village voice. It was in 1973. They came to me and said, listen, i want to do the story on the mob and having these restaurants in the South Village and all the mob meetings taking place. Also, this guy came to her and said, we want to open up the ballroom, a gay cabaret on west broadway, but we cant get a Liquor License. So, she called and introduced me to this guy and said, what can we do . Do a story about it. I said i will do a story but it will nothing will happen. It is the village voice, not the new york times. She said, or can we do . I said we can do a story about how the cops never bust where they are Holding Meetings with mobsters on a friday night. So i went around and wrote down license plates numbers. I live down there in the south lich. I knew where the mob meetings were taking place. I wrote down license numbers of these double and triple parked limousines outside. Mary got a cop she knew and ran the plates, and we found out who was meeting in all these restaurants so i sat down and wrote a story. The new york city wont issue a Liquor License to these eight or 10 upstanding gay citizens but they are issuing licenses to these gangsters. Mary took the story and went up to the liquor commissioner. I named the commissioner of abc and said this is the guy that is doing it. She went up there and put it on his desk on a monday and said, this runs on wednesday unless you give the ballroom a Liquor License. If you give them a Liquor License, we wont run it. So my story did not run and the ballroom got a Liquor License. [laughter] that was it. That broke the logjam. Know, other bars got one, and i didnt pay for drinks for quite a while. At no point were you afraid when you were taking down these license plates and doing this . Lucian they didnt see me taking down license plates. [laughter] im hoping. You realize this is being videotaped now russian mark videotaped now . [laughter] lucian but what i am saying is, once gay people started owning gay bars, then the mob wasnt involved and they werent paying off the cops and they didnt have a reason to go bust them because they werent getting a pass. So a snowballing effect took place and gay bars started getting Liquor Licenses and getting legitimized and it happened over time. At the same time, things were happening like people were working towards getting gay people the right to serve in the military. And that started changing things. Then, gay people were working toward the right to marry. And that started changing things. All of this happened over the last 50 years. It is really pretty extraordinary when you think about it. It is extraordinary to me because i was there the night that was the rosa parks moment for the gay movement. That was the night that gay people, instead of saying i will move to the back of the bus, they said youre not going to bust our bars anymore. And we are not going to put up with it. I had no idea at the time what i was looking at. I thought i was looking at a gay riot. Oh my god, look at that guy. He is in a dress. The amazing thing about it was the cops were so incompetent that they would line up and chase gay people down christopher street, and the gay people would run around, come up behind the cops and form it kick form a kick line and start going we are the stonewall girls the cops turn around and see that and they start chasing them that way. I ended up teaching a class on how not to do riot controls in the army based on this riot. They gave me a theater at fort carson and i taught battalions. I drew a map of Sheridan Square on it. I drew arrows of where the cops are. A blue arrow, and where the gay people are and all that stuff. And taught how not to control a riot to a whole division of soldiers. Which was an experience all to itself. That was one of the problems of Law Enforcement and if you treat people as in other, they will behave like an other. Jim i want to talk more about the other later. But i want ask about your liaison unit. The competent cops of today and what you do in terms of outreach with the Gay Community and straight, for that matter. We are certainly not doing kick lines. Because i am incompetent. That is not one of my gay traits. I am not able to do that. You have to go through a course. Let me see. Has changed now is that we have an understanding, first of all, that this community exists. That was step one and this still exists in some parts of the country. If i go to a Law Enforcement executive and i say who are your Lgbtq Community leaders . Well, we dont have them here. If youre of a community where you dont think you have lgbt people, do you think they are being treated with professionalism . Step one was to have our leaders, not just Community Leaders but Law Enforcement leaders, acknowledge this community exists, they have rights, and they have the right to speak up when they are not treated properly. That was step one. The next step was changing culture within the Police Department. Brian has spoken about how slow that is. We still have homophobes in Law Enforcement or we still have racists in Law Enforcement, and we will never get rid of that as long as human beings are Police Officers, but what were doing more and more of is exposing Police Officers to any one of a number of cultures, the lgbtq plus committee is one of many, but who are they . How do they engage in our lives . What is a respectful way to address someone . What are the laws with regard to the activity they engage in . What are their rights . Making sure Police Officers understand that no different than any other community, if you dont do what we trained you to do, then we are not going to protect you. Theres not a thin blue line when it comes to the that type of misconduct and disrespect. Lastly, were pretty proud that we go above and beyond here in washington, d. C. We are using Police Officers who are members of the community and allies to engage where the Community Feels safe. That is a little bit different than basic Community Policing. Basic Community Policing you throw up attendance, invite everybody for hamburgers and hotdogs, maybe go to a parade and sing kumbaya together. We are going into tough places where the community is safe, they know this is their space , and we are saying we are here with you, we are here to listen to you and eventually it becomes instead of the cops are here, what is wrong . It is oh, the cops are here. That is brett, that is nicole, thats jim. When you change the dynamic and people actually welcome you as Police Officers into their community or acknowledge that you are members of the community, that is when you can do a better job because it is all about preparing for the crisis and trauma in the community so that you gain cooperation and things go more smoothly when the crisis occurs. Jim brian, do you see that to . Too . How long does it take . It takes a long time. Everything he just said is true. I dont want to repeat any of that, but there is some kind of i dont know what it is, but there is this thing where people with id to engage when i say our community, i say i am an openly queer man and when you hear me say our community, i am not talking about the police. I just want everyone to be clear. With our community, they just never knew. Shucks moment awe in the Police Department occurred on the morning of the pulse nightclub shooting. I had just come from the Detective Bureau and this is when commissioner oneill was the chief of the department and i was maybe a month into his office. He had pulled me out of the Detective Bureau to work for him. A lot of things went through my mind when the calls started coming very early and people telling me to turn on the tv. The first thing that came through my mind is, oh, my god, we are going to respond to this. I didnt mean to orlando, florida. The type of city that new york city is, we respond to every incident locally. It doesnt matter if it happened somewhere else in the country, or it happened somewhere else in the world. Lets use the Jewish Community for a good example of this. If we have a mass casualty incident or terrorist attack at a synagogue in brussels or like we had in pittsburgh at halloween, it was a couple days before or after halloween. The Jewish Community knows that october. We are coming. They know there is going to be a marked police car outside of the synagogue. They can expect to see high visibility patrols, what we call a hercules team. Which is a squad of Emergency Services officers with heavy weaponry and a k9 officer and intel and we can move these people around as we need to over the course of the day. Based upon intelligence. The Jewish Community knows and they appreciate it. I was having a heart attack because i was like, oh, my god, we are coming and this community has never seen this. Lieutenants, and the same morning we had the puerto rican day parade which is a Massive Police detail in new york city, and i was going to assist with that. I called the lieutenant and said and he said, just go do whatever you need to do. Sign in, get the car, and get the hell out there. My first stop was at the lgbtq Committee Center on 13th street in manhattan. I walked up to the desk dressed like this and i have a tie on at work. I went a little casual today for you all. But, i walked in and i said i am a detective with the Police Department. We need to speak to whoever is in charge. I know it is a sunday morning, but can you get someone on the phone for me . Five minutes later and in the back room, we are on a Conference Call with the chief operating officer. It is rob wheeler. I had never met him before it i and i never did any kind of outreach before, i was just running goal, which is an independent organization. We are our own 501 c 3 . We are a watchdog. Now i had to do work for the chief and do work for the department. I told this guy, i said first of all, let me ask you if you want the security, and if you tell me no, the other part of that is it is going to come anyway. Ive always been a bit of an outside of the box thinker. I said why dont you put an e mail out to everybody on your subscriber list saying the Police Department is going to be outside for a few weeks until we know what is going on. Then, the rest of the day, going to brunch spots. We like brunch. [laughter] i dont know if you got that memo, but it is a big thing with us. But going in and meeting with nightlife people. Over the next few days, i was getting calls on my cell phone, my work phone and personal phone. It was like i was peddling some contraband. People are like, are you the detective that can get us some security . I got your number from someone and they said that you helped them because people wanted the protection. They felt better, and it was even at the discomfort of some of their clients and these service providers. That is where a Real Partnership has to exist. There has to be trust like mike said. You cant just show up and give out key rings at a pride march and expect everyone will love the police. We are nobodys friends. I am a realist. Nobody calls the police because they have extra tickets to the ballgame. Nobody calls the police because there are a couple beers left in the cooler after the barbecue or there is food left over. What do we get calls for . Horrible, terrible things where people are not at their best. Maybe to a large extent, our history has not been the best at responding to some of these incidents and situations and i think to an extent, that still goes on. I do think in the last five years, i finally see Law Enforcement, at least the executives i work with, they want to get out ahead of things. They want the input. We are the police and we know what were doing. If that is your mindset, good luck. You will not have a long tenure as a Law Enforcement executive these days. We have to think about what we are not thinking about and really engage. We started a neighborhood coordination officer program where every sector or precinct is broken down into a sector and there are two cops who work there that do absolutely for four hours as noncommitted radio time they are required to do as part of their shifts, where they are out there going to businesses in their sector and theyre supposed to meet with Community Leaders. They had email addresses, cell phones, people know they can call them. It is really changing the conversation out there. Onthat is encouraging, and that encouraging note, we want to pause and take questions from you folks. We have a couple of microphones. Anyone have any questions for our panelists . Lets hear from you if you do. Can you hear me . I was wondering, this tech to referenced, there were differences versus a gay male officer versus a lesbian officer. Can you talk about those . We still live in a society where we sexualize women. If you are going to be paired up with a lesbian Police Officer, guys minds go wild. Im so good, maybe i can get her. I will have her and a girlfriend. It is a mindset. But we perceive gay men as weak. Effeminate. Not being able to handle themselves. There are people who will test you. Carl was a detective in the Police Investigation unit. That is a serious unit because first of all, the cases are automatically felonies when you impersonate a police to commit a crime. The first question he got was, do you know how to fight . I dont think we ask those questions of lesbian officers . As a society, we still sexualize women and that is a fantasy. That has allowed to perpetuate itself, if that clears that up. I think the misogyny exists within Law Enforcement still, but i think openly lesbian women are more valued than openly gay men generally in this profession. Because openly gay men are viewed as effeminate and weak. [indiscernible] 100 stereotypes. We have lipstick lesbians and butch lesbians. You cannot judge their ability at policing based on the way they look. Training people and teaching people how to break through those stereotypes is the hard. Art you spoke about your story, presenting your story about these mob persuasions as a way of persuading gay people to own clubs. How do you feel the public desire for these stories has changed . Or the medias desires for presenting these has changed . Good question. It has changed. , therery about stonewall new yorkry in the post about that. Now, there is a story this big apologizing about stonewall. There have been big stories about the stonewall anniversary. All the gay pride parades. There have been millions of stories about gays in the military. Millions of stories about gays being allowed to be married. I mean gay people, to a large extent have way entered the mainstream compared to where they were in 1969. Somebody was asking me, what is the big difference between then and now . The big difference that stonewall made was everybody in the riot was out. They were on the street. They looked gay. They were in a gay riot. So they were out. After stonewall, more and more people started coming out. As more people came out, more and more people realized, i hey, my cousin is gay. Or that couple that lives there nextdoor are not just roommates, they actually live together. They are a family. They love each other. With gay people coming out, it affected families, communities. It affected relationships at work. It made everything better. Everything. It has made coverage in the media better as well. It has made what you see on tv better. Hi, so during the 1960s, when there was heavy policing, i read the police had a lot of knowledge about the Gay Community with the under the radar bars. It seems like the police had a really deep connection. While not necessarily the best connection, but a connection and Institutional Knowledge about the Gay Community. Do you think because the policing efforts have died down a lot for the Gay Community, the there is a decline of Institutional Knowledge and culture and is there a way to preserve that without actually going into the same policing tactics . That is directed toward me . [laughter] we were kind of hoping. Im sorry, i missed the gist of your question. When there was heavy policing, there was a lot more knowledge about the culture of the local gay communities. When that policing dies down, does that knowledge go away with it . If so, how do you preserve that . On tactics, policing, whatever. Im not sure i agree with that. I dont think the police had i mean there was a lot of policing of the Gay Community back in the 1960s. They did not know [expletive] about the Gay Community. You are talking about knowing how to entrap gay men. They knew where they went, they had an idea how gay men dressed when they were out to socialize, meet other gay men. They would take their best looking Police Officers, dress them in tight pants, and dress them kind of like gay men dressed in those areas, and entice them. That is really not a knowledge of gay culture or even a gay mentality. It is a very surface thing. My impression is, and i have not been involved in Law Enforcement, probably Law Enforcement has been learning bit by bit and other institutions and society have been learning, whether it is the military, business, church. That is my impression. Does that answer your question . Yeah, it does. If i could also, there is this wonderful thing out there called the internet. Perhaps you have heard of it. As big of neanderthals as we are as Police Officers, they know how to use it. [laughter] sorry, brian. What i mean by that, sometimes in spite of a lack of training, or experience, they have personal lives and interests. They are exploring things everyone else in society is exploring. What we are also doing a much better job of educating officers about the communities we serve. That has gotten better. Because of what we had talked about, events like stonewall, weak people. They they cause people to move in a better direction. And progress to be made. I dont know i train cops about lgbtq issues. I am always surprised there is somebody that does not know the difference between bisexuality and a transgender individual. They dont even know what the term intersexuality is. Some of you are going, i dont know either. We are trying to train more cops. We are talking to someone representing new york city. And someone representing washington, d. C. You say you traveled the country. I am curious about the Lgbt Communitys and small towns like alabama or other parts of the country, how they are treated by police. Are they even on the radar . You talk about years ago, entrapment. Does that kind of thing still happen . Is that not allowed to happen in new york or d. C. . It must have been about 14 years ago. My pager went off. That tells you how long ago it was. It was an area code from north carolina. I called her back, and it was a deputy. I swear to god, his name was bubba something. From north carolina. He was a deputy sheriff. He was investigating one of those he she murders in a large metropolitan area in north carolina. He had learned about my work from the newspapers and one of his lieutenants said you have to call this guy because you are not making progress on this he she murder. The first thing i did was, are you talking about a transgender individual . He didnt know what that meant. We figured out he was talking about a transgender female. She was murdered. I said, tell me something. Where did this occur . He told me, and i said, is that anywhere near your transgender stroll . There was just sort of i could hear the ocean. That was about it and he paused and said, what is that . I said, where does transgender prostitution happen . He said, so, we do not have that. Not in our town. So i went online, i googled that area, looking for transgender prostitutes. And it took me a few moments, and i will make up the street in case anyone is from the town, how about telegraph road was to mark do you know where that is . He said, sir, that is where the Police Station is. I said, good, you dont have far to go. [laughter] what i want you to do on the day of the week the murder happened, monday, tuesday or wednesday, go out that night about the same time. And all those people wandering around, Start Talking to them about this murder. Three days later, he called me and he said he closed the case. Just because he became aware a community existed and the best way to engage them. That is where we are. In some parts of the country, they dont even acknowledge that gay people exist. They could not tell you they Lgbtq Community center. We talk about training. Training is farreaching. One of the things i have been reading over, this is the settlement from when the gay officers Action League sued the new York City Police department. It was in 1996. One of the things that came out of this settlement was the goal was given the opportunity to train officers in lgbtq sensitivity and awareness. That has looked like Different Things over the years. I mentioned carl because carl is a gift to my agency. Before he became a cop at 30 something years old, he was the director of client services. He worked at the david geffen aids program. He was with act up on the brooklyn bridge. He brings all this realworld activist experience and education to the pd. When he got involved, he redid the curriculum. We dont go into do training with cops. We dont spend a lot of time in definitions. We give them to you. We dont spend a lot of time on the history. We do two things. I think that we want people to take away from it. One is we give them a little bit of our personal coming out stories. Because we are cops training cops. They can see all these issues have affected the people standing in front of them. Giving them instruction, so somebody who was thrown out of her house in high school for being a lesbian, who put herself through high school, whose mother would not give her Financial Aid paperwork for college, she put herself through college. She took the police test. She is now new York City Police sergeant. You give a cop a story about you. Hey, listen, i went through all this [expletive], so this is very real. We have cops involved, that came up through housing and that is amazing in and of itself. The other part of what we do is we really were doing implicit bias training before that was a thing. We want the recruits, especially, to understand where your ideas come from. You have been bombarded with messages since you were a child. Society tells you what is preferred. And fair and impartial policing, when we talk about implicit bias. We put the recruits in scenarios. We say, everybody in here is going to police fairly and impartially, right . All the hands go up. Big smiling, grinning faces, yes, we are going to be fair and impartial. We graduate them. We take an officer and tell him, tonight, you have this post. Your sergeant told you there was a high propensity of robberies in this area. We want to keep people moving. It is inside of the club district, you know, we dont want cars stopping. There is no reason for a car to be stopping. Keep the area clear. We tell the cop in the alleyway, there is a vehicle parked. It does not have its lights on but it is running. The cop goes up to the vehicle. He conducts an investigation, and he finds a man receiving oral sex from a woman. We ask him, what do you got . You have a chuckle, the cops engage a little bit. What you actually have is a penal law misdemeanor. You have a must arrest in this situation, but you kind of ask them, what are they really going to do . Some of them say, i am going to issue a summons. Im going to lock them up. I am going to let them go. We play with this a little bit. You even get some of them are honest. I know what you are going to do, you are going to text a cop and say, you are never going to believe what is going on. That is what you are going to do, right . Everybody is having a good time. And then we graduate them again. I say, put them in the same scenario, and i say, now, you come across that same car and they are in the alleyway, and it is a man getting oral sex from a man. What have you got . The air gets sucked out of the room. They dont know what they have. Everybody just said they are going to be fair and impartial. Every hand went up, every face was grinning. We were seeing peace. I say, listen. If a guy is getting lucky in one scenario, then the guy is getting lucky in the other scenario. Being a fair and impartial Police Officer is taking the same action no matter what the Sexual Orientation is, no matter what the race, color is. No matter what the religion. We want them to understand where their ideas come from. What i also want you to understand is, when you wear that uniform, you are representing me. And you are representing brett, and a couple million other honest people. Who have a tremendous amount of integrity and have sacrificed their lives for this job. And in the name of other people. So whatever conversations you may have at your dinner table, or whatever joke you may tell after church with your friends at the bar or wherever you go, when you put on that uniform and you put that shield on your chest, you better treat everybody the same. Because you have to be the police for everybody, not just the people that look like you. Not just the people that come from your ethnic or religious background or whatever the case may be. You have to be the police for everybody, and you have to do it fairly and impartially. And that is what the gay officers Action League stands for. Thank you for your powerful perspective. All of you gentlemen, and the insight you have shared today. We cannot thank you enough for taking us back and telling us how much progress we have made. It is fascinating to hear your stories. And what is being done on the front lines. Anybody else have a question before we wrap up . Go ahead, sir. Hopefully it is for brett. Sergeant brett, could you tell us a little but about how you got started in washington and how other cities and how other cities in the country follow the lead of doing training, but have a done the same kind of institutionalization we have a d. C. . Thanks for the question. Here in washington, d. C. , we didnt have the same struggle new york had. In that it did not take lawsuits and really forcefully pushing our way into this. Our community worked with our Police Department to support the idea that the Lgbtq Community, back then called the lesbian and gay liaison unit, deserved to have officers that were familiar enough with the community and able to engage members in a safe way that the chief of police back then, Charles Ramsey, said yes. It started in one of our police districts. It was in the neighborhood back then, and Charles Ramsey realized quickly this was something that should not be confined to one police districts, so he expanded it citywide. We are, or what we believe, is one of the only fulltime police units, meaning not just the liaison officer, but multiple officers working fulltime in the community. Three parts to the mission, outreach, the usual Community Policing stuff, going to events, meetings,ivals, singing kumbaya. Training and education. Not just training officers, because that is really important, we have got to get them to understand there are certain ways to engage Community Members, but another part of our training is going the opposite direction. Training u. S. Community members training you, as Community Members, about what you should expect from us. What our jobs are. What your rights are. What the laws are. It is not a secret and washington, d. C. , we have continued to see bias crimes increase as far as numbers reported. One of the reasons why we celebrate the fact our numbers go up is we believe we are educating our citizens better and better every year, and building stronger relationships. So now highest crimes committed in the past are being reported to us. That is part of training and education. The third part of the mission, the part i am biased about that i think is important, unlike most Community Policing, we are doing police work. The officers i work with are not only going to be at those events or classes, but when that pride parade was interrupted by what appeared to be an active shooter, but thank god wasnt, it was these officers in the liaison units who were amongst the first running through the crowd, the opposite direction towards it. What Community Members saw was members of their community who wear badges and guns and uniforms engaging in real police work and public safety. Yes, we are helping other Police Departments around the world. Probably not a week goes by we do not hear from other agencies about how they tailor this type of work to their Police Department, whether it is designating an officer parttime, an officer fulltime, or even creating a fulltime unit. One of the benefits we have is in 2007, we won the harvards innovation American Government award. We won a grant. It was to help replicate the work we are doing and we are proud to do that whenever we can and help Police Departments anywhere in the world are the type of work we are doing. Not just the Lgbt Community but all the communities we work in, so i hope i answered your question. I think we are about out of time. Thank you for coming. Gentlemen, we cannot thank you enough. [applause] this weekend, American History tv will mark the 50th anniversary of the river fire, that shed light on Water Pollution and help to read the clean water act on sunday at 9 00 a. M. Eastern. The historian and coauthor of where the river burned joins us live from along the river in cleveland to take your calls and talk about the fire Miss Associated with it and the campaign by the then cleveland mayor to find solutions. Watch our program on the 50th anniversary of the cuyahoga 9 00 fire, live, sunday at a. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan3. On its 15th anniversary in 1985, the Environmental Protection agency created a 20 minute film documenting the rationale or its creation by the Nixon Administration in 1970, and highlighting its most significant achievement